We started the week with a trip up to good ol' Budapest, where we had Zone Conferences. This time, it was special because we went up to Gellért Hegy, where Hungary was dedicated for the preaching of the Gospel by President Nelson. There, we read highlights from the dedicatory prayer and each rededicated ourselves to serve with all that we have. Looking out over the Danube in a moment of reverent reflection and thinking of all that I have learned in this country, remembering my love and the Savior's love for the Hungarian people, and deciding to rededicate myself to them and to the work was a tender experience that I won't forget.

Zone Conferences were great. The train back to Miskolc was miserable... We caught a bus to a city called Hatvan and transferred to a train from there, but the only train available arrived at midnight.... So we had a very long day hahaha.

Before English class, we met with a smaller group of people who want extra practice and taught a 30/30 lesson (30 minutes English, 30 minutes Gospel). We had 5 people there and for the Gospel part, we took a tour of the Chapel. It was a very sweet little experience and everyone was very curious and had great questions. You could see that they were touched by the Spirit, and it was another tender experience of the week.

On Friday we had exchanges in Eger and I was with Elder Dalton. I was privileged to take Elder Dalton out street contacting on his first day in the country, so it was super fun to be with him for a full 24 hours, almost 6 months later. He's doing great and we had a lot of fun together. Eger is one of the most beautiful cities I've been in! The cobblestone roads, beautiful architecture, and street performers make you feel like you're walking through the scene of a movie.

Kiss Norbi is scheduled to be baptized on June 8th and is very excited. Yesterday, he came to Church with his siblings and Grandma and was looking at the paintings hung up on the wall, asking us questions about them as we admired the art. When he saw the picture of John the Baptist baptizing Jesus, he pointed at it and exclaimed, "Look! I'm going to be baptized too!" It was so cute. We're so excited for and proud of him and his family and their faith.

It is so good to be a missionary. I know that God loves each and every one of us and is personally aware of us. I'm honored and humbled to know that as a set apart servant of Christ, my only job is to invite others to Him all day, every day. I'm so grateful for my mission.

Szeretettel,

Elder Burnett

p.s. Fun fact about Hungary that I just learned: Instead of doing a yearbook for graduation, they put up pictures of all of the students who graduated in the windows of stores for everyone to see. The other day, we stopped to look at the pictures and as we were walking down the street afterward, we noticed one of the kids whom we saw in the store window and stopped him and talked to him by name. I'm sure that freaked him out hahaha.

Hey all!

This one is going to be short and sweet. CUE BULLET POINTS!

-Met with the Miskolc version of the YMCA and we're going to teach a second English class there each week

-The Szeged Elders came up for exchanges and I served with Elder Morgan for a day (big party)

-On our way to visit a less active member, we ran into her daughter and she joined us for our lesson!

-We had 14 less active members with whom we've worked come to Church yesterday. That's enough to be it's own branch! What a miracle!

-On top of that, we had 3 friends come to Church! Two of which were people we haven't ever even met with; we just had a short conversation on the street with each of them and they each said, "Sure, I'll come sometime I guess." So that was huge!

-We got to take some donations to the Ronald Mcdonald House here in Miskolc (yeah, we have one!) and that was fun!

We have a big week coming up with Zone Conference and interviews and exchanges... It'll be great.

The Lord is at the Helm of this work! I am so honored to be a missionary and love what I do.

szeretettel,

Burnett elder

I love the Salt Lake Temple and it's story. Earlier in the week, we were listening to a speech by Elder Jeffery R. Holland called "However Long and Hard the Road" (linked at the bottom) and he was talking about the painstaking process of building this temple. He describes the slow progress and backbreaking work saying,

"The work seemed ill-fated from the start. The excavation for the basement required trenches twenty feet wide and sixteen feet deep, much of it through solid gravel. Just digging for the foundation alone required nine thousand man days of labor. Surely someone must have said, 'A temple would be fine, but do we really need one this big?' But they kept on digging. Maybe they believed they were 'laying the foundation of a great work.' In any case they worked on, 'not weary in well-doing.'..."The journals and histories of [the] teamsters are filled with accounts of broken axles, mud-mired animals, shattered sprockets, and shattered hopes. I do not have any evidence that these men swore, but surely they might have been seen turning a rather steely eye toward heaven. But they believed and kept pulling."

I admit, at times I've found myself turning a steely eye toward heaven myself. "Baptisms would be nice, progress would be nice, shoot... even a new person to teach would be nice... but do I really need to be putting myself out there in the heat of the day, day after day after day?" Progress at times is imperceptible, and sometimes I can't help but think if we're really making a difference, but as we have "worked on, not weary in well-doing", casting those thoughts of doubt to the side, we have seen miracles poured out upon us in very real ways.

On the same day that we had listened to that speech, we were wondering what we could do to "make" things happen. What were we doing wrong? What could we change about the way we do work to make people more interested?" And Elder Peery said something along the lines that we are just like the early saints, who had to work day after day to chisel away and haul those granite blocks down mountains to build the temple. When a stone cutter chisels at a stone, it takes hundreds of strikes before the stone breaks. There's maybe not anything particularly special about the final strike that causes the break, but it's the consistent effort of the previous hits.

With this shift in perspective, we continued swinging. As we were walking through the town square, Elder Peery stopped and said, "There was a boy on a bench, we should turn around and talk to him." Following this prompting, we talked with the boy and he ended up being interested enough to hear us out and listen for about 10 minutes. We gave him a copy of the Book of Mormon and set up to meet the next day (he ended up dogging our second lesson, let's just rip that bandaid off right now haha). As we stood up from this little meeting, we were headed out and a woman stopped us and said, "You can't leave without talking to me!" Turns out, Elder Peery had stopped her on the street and met with her a few months ago and they gave her a copy of the Book of Mormon. She said, "I read that book you gave me and I know it's true. I couldn't stop reading it! I read it all in 3 days. Eating and sleeping was a burden. All I wanted to do was read! When I finished it, I prayed about it and I felt the Spirit all around my body, like snakes! It was so strong! I know that this Book is true! I've been telling my children and my friends that if they want to be happy, they need to read the Book of Mormon!" 

Well gee.... After all this swinging, something broke! We're super excited to see where things go with that. I know that there is power in the Book of Mormon, and I also know that God will bless us as we work hard and endure. It was such a sweet moment, and I believe that one of the reasons it was so incredible is because of how hard we worked before being blessed like that. Lives have changed, including my own, because of the things we are doing here. How cool is that? At times, well, really the majority of the time, it's not comfortable and it certainly isn't easy. But the pay off is incredible.

Returning to the account of the construction of the Salt Lake Temple, President Holland described its glorious finale...

(Quoting Wilford Woodruff)

"If there is any scene on the face of this earth that will attract the attention of the God of heaven and the heavenly host, it is the one before us today—the assembling of this people, the shout of ‘Hosanna!’ the laying of the topstone of this Temple in honor to our God."

In the writing of one who was there, 'The scene that followed is beyond the power of language to describe.' Lorenzo Snow, beloved President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, came forward leading 40,000 Latter-day Saints in the Hosanna shout. Every hand held a handkerchief every eye was filled with tears. One said the very 'ground seemed to tremble with the volume of the sound' which echoed off the tops of the mountains. 'A grander or more imposing spectacle than this ceremony of laying the Temple capstone is not recorded in history' It was finally and forever finished."

Though we may not be literally building temples, we are all in a very real way working to build the Kingdom of God, which is the same work. Our trials may not come in the form of shattered sprockets and mud mired animals, but I this comparison has given me the strength and motivation to keep pushing. Just like those early Saints, we too will one day shout Hosanna as we are blessed because of our consistent efforts.

You should really check out this speech.

Szeretettel,

Elder Burnett

https://speeches.byu.edu/talks/jeffrey-r-and-patricia-t-holland_however-long-hard-road/)  

May has come, my allergies have calmed down, and the weather has gotten unexpectedly cold. I even had to bust out my winter coat yesterday! It's been raining for about 3 days now and will probably continue for a while. 

Last week while doing our p-day shopping, Elder Peery and I made an impulse decision to buy two flowers. We took them home and found an old jar and an empty sour cream container which we then took out to the lot by our apartment to dig up some dirt. As we were digging up dirt and planting our new friends, we were just laughing with excitement when an old bácsi walked by and said, "You boys are doing a fine job!" It was basically a moment of pure joy. We named our flowers Derek and Mitch. They've taught us a lot, actually.

As we were talking about Derek and Mitch and all the joy they brought to our apartment, we created a perfect spiritual analogy, which is not at all original, but nonetheless entirely applicable. Our lives are like plots of land, each with its own unique variety of vegetation. In our gardens, good habits are like flowers, which make our plots beautiful and our lives fulfilling. Bad habits are the weeds of our lives, which choke out our flowers and distract from the overall beauty of our plots.

Each night, Elder Peery and I have been discussing different flowers, or good habits, that we want to keep watering and different weeds, or bad habits, that we could pluck out. It's been a great practice that has helped us not only to see the good things that we're doing, but also make little course corrections that help us to be even better :)

So many cool things have happened this week. The funny thing about missionary work is that there are tons of things that I think are super cool, but really aren't super worth mentioning because without the full picture, I just can't do the experience justice in an email. It's kind of like my whole life is a "you had to be there" thing, you know? So, like the Prophets of old, it sufficeth to say that my week was awesome. We experience miracles and tender mercies every single day.

I know that God lives and loves each and every one of us! It's been such a blessing to be able to just truthfully say every day that I feel my Savior's love. The coolest part is that YOU can feel it too. Seriously! All you have to do is be obedient, be faithful, and try your best. There's no secret, no trick, no hidden fee. You can just be loved by the most powerful beings who exist JUST because you are Theirs. Think about that and pray about it. It's one of the most amazing truths that we can know.

I'm grateful to be blessed rotten :)

Szeretettel,

Elder Burnett

Happy Transfer Day!

This round was actually pretty funny. Elder Hough was told his call a few days early and took off to Győr after MLC yesterday. Elder Peery and I, however, never got a call, so at around 11 this morning, we texted President Hettinger asking, "So are we staying together or what?" and his response was simply, "Dream team!" So I guess that means I'll be staying in Miskolc for another 5 weeks at least hahaha.

This week, we met with Gergő and had an awesome lesson about Family History. He was so excited about the notion that he had ancestors on the other side who were cheering him on and that wanted to help him to help them perform saving ordinances in the Temple. It was a super tender lesson and he was so touched. We all felt the Spirit of Elijah and are so excited for Gergő!

As I alluded to above, we had MLC on Monday. Getting there was quite an adventure... Long story short, because of some work they're doing on the railway, we took a train to a city called Hatvan, where we transferred to a bus that took us the rest of the way to Budapest. Well, we thought the bus would go directly to Budapest, but it ended up driving us all around the outlying cities and dropped us off in the middle of Narnia (not actually Narnia, but a small city called Rákos which funnily means either "cancerous" or "crabby") We waited there for about 30 minutes before catching a train to Budapest. Once in Budapest we had to take a bus to a tram station and then a tram to the mission home.... It was a long, long night but we made it!

 

 

MLC was combined with the Romanian missionaries, which is always super fun. We mostly discussed technology and prepared for the Mission to get smart phones, will supposedly will happen in "the near future". Not sure what that means, but it'll be great to have smart phones. With the coming technology and Budapest Temple, there is a feeling of excitement in the air and we know that the Lord has big things in store for Hungary! Seriously, these are game changers.

Every day I hit the pillow grateful to be a missionary. I'm grateful for the lessons I've learned and that the Lord has been so carefully involved in my life. I know that He guides us and loves each and every one of us personally. The more I understand my relationship with God, the better I am able to rely on Him and feel support from Him. I trust Him and know that His plan for us is perfect and personal. I love the Gospel of Jesus Christ and know that it has blessed my life in every way.

Life is good!

Szeretettel,

Elder Burnett